Meta

Leveling a Warlock: Level 10

NB: This guide, whilst explaining some terminology, assumes you’re not new to the game and understand its basic principles.

Training right away at level 10 is going to bring us 4 spells – two new and two upgrades.

The two upgrades are to our Demon Skin and Immolate spells – the former will now give us more armour and the latter will simply do more damage, which is all great. Immolate still, of course, leaves a DoT on the enemy.

The first new ability we learn is very important, and goes by the name of Drain Soul. This is our first channeled spell, and what this means is we have to stand in place and channel it to cast it, hence it’s cancelled if we move or do something else (I didn’t explain this very well in the video). While we’re casting, it does deal a small amount of damage to the enemy, which is increased if the spell starts being channeled when the opponent is at 25% health or less, but the major part of the spell is the second half of the tooltip.

Basically, every time the spell deals damage it has a chance to create an item called a Soul Shard, and if the target dies while the spell is active (and gives you honour or xp) you have a 100% chance to create one. Soul Shards are key to being a Warlock, as they are the primary reagents for many of our spells, including some demon summons. While the Imp doesn’t require a shard to summon, the other trainer-learned demons do, and additionally things at later levels like Soul Fire, Soulshatter and our various stones (Healthstone, Soulstone, Spellstone and so on) can only be cast if we give up a shard, making them necessary to have, and Drain Soul facilitates this.

The second new thing we learn is the aforementioned Healthstone, which the trainer will only teach you if you know Drain Soul first. This spell creates (at this level) a Minor Healthstone, which essentially consumes a shard in the process but can then be used like a potion to instantly restore health – rank 1 will give us back 100, which is not bad at all. Healthstones can be very useful in a tight spot and I recommend keeping one on you at all times, however they will disappear if you log out for 15 minutes or longer.

As well as the above, level 10 also brings with it the quest to obtain our second demon, the Voidwalker. This is the Warlock tanking pet, able to take a lot of damage because of its high health pool and able to taunt mobs away from us with Torment. This ideally is the pet you want to use for most of your leveling, at least until the Felguard at level 50 if you’re Demonology (as you should be), as it will keep you alive better than the Imp will, though should you venture into an instance, or be in a group with a tank, feel free to use the Imp for greater damage.

That really wraps up this section of the guide – at some point in the future I’ll have guides for 11-80 for each of the 3 specs, but these will definitely be written because making videos is very time consuming and I’m not doing another 40 odd!